The Hummingbird update focuses more on Google's Knowledge Graph – an encyclopaedia of about 570m concepts and relationships that allows Google to anticipate facts and figures you might want to know about your search term.

New engine with old parts

"In general, Hummingbird – Google says – is a new engine built on both existing and new parts, organised in a way to especially serve the search demands of today, rather than one created for the needs of 10 years ago, with the technologies back then," said Danny Sullivan of the search blog Search Engine Land.

It will benefit those using more modern forms of search, such as conversational or voice search, where you ask Google a question rather than typing keywords into the search box.

"The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.

"Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query – the whole sentence or conversation or meaning – is taken into account, rather than particular words," said Sullivan.

But will it really work?

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to do before and after comparisons, especially as Google has pushed out the Hummingbird update over the last month without any public announcements.

For the moment we only have Google's word that Hummingbird will make a difference, although it gave a few examples of searches that could benefit from the new algorithm.

For instance, a search for "acid reflux prescription" pre-Hummingbird produced sites with lists of drugs, but now brings up search results with more information about acid reflux treatment in general.

Likewise, a search for "pizza hut calories per slice" now links the answer directly from Pizza Hut.

It’s a smart move, but there’s a long way to go

“Apps are the biggest long-term threat to Google’s current search-based business model – people turn to apps for information on discrete services like flights rather than search,” said Ian Maude, a search analyst at Enders Analysis.

Google Now – Google’s personal digital assistant that uses context, location and knowledge of the user’s habits to preempt requests for information like flights, your daily commute and film times – has been one of Google’s attempts to fight the silos of individual apps and keep you within the Google search ecosystem. That all helps Google maintain its estimated 53% market share of internet advertising.

Google Now relies on Knowledge Graph, as well as natural language interpretation, which were both boosted by the Hummingbird update.

“Hummingbird doesn’t replace keyword search, it augments it, speeding up the process of search using natural language processes that understands conversational search or speech – it’s a smart move, but there’s clearly a long way to go.

“Right now, when I search for trains to Warwickshire, I get a list of search results for train operator websites, but I don’t yet get times for the next trains pulled into fact boxes by Google,” said Maude.

• Not everything is so straightforward in Google land, as Google's chat protocols Hangouts and Talk, suffered a privacy issue on the 26 September that saw instant messages routed to unintended recipients.